Working Outline for Educational Fandoms

Introduction: Talk about fandoms, the stigmas and how they can be compared to academia.

Thesis: One of the values of fandoms come from their ability to reignite the original flame of literary education; by creating a desire to study, engage, and think critically about the text enabling a remarkable academic experience without all of the pressures and stigma of academia.

Body of Paper:

• Address counterarguments (erotica fanfiction, shipping wars, etc)
• Fanfiction is a stepping stone. It leads to further integration into the world of the story (further study, etc)
• address counter arguments to this point (some is horribly off base, badly written, etc) The argument isn't that it is as good as polished academia, it's that it could be.
• Add in pictures if you. (various pins you've found on facebook, also fan theories)
• Discuss the stigmas of fandoms and how that effects the way people view them and how they think of themselves.
• Fandoms are nerdy and have problems connecting to reality
• All fans are antisocial
• All fans are "weird"
• Fans are "better" than other people
• Fans have more fun
• Etc. (stigmas can and should be both good and bad and from both sides.)
• The main focus of this paper needs to be about fandoms and they way they study and immerse themselves in the world of the fandom. How they study it with minute detail. Professors and scholars can be part of a fandom without even knowing it, just by loving the work that they're studying. Fans could open the doorway to a new literary (and cinematic) canon that has previously been untouched in most universities. There's an entire world of literature that academics haven't even touched! (or, if they have, there is still plenty to be said on it)

Conclusion: Why fandoms can benefit academia. Why we should care.

We should care, because fans and fandoms are a community that is only going to continue growing. We should care about their growth and what they do with their talents the same way we care about the humanities and the education one receives from a degree in English. There is so much that we can learn from studying the little things that these fandoms are looking at everyday. Looking at individual lines of dialogue and emotion with the same amount of concentration that we do traditional canological texts. This can open up a whole new world and it's so exciting! There are classes and papers written on various well-known "fan" literature, but there is so much more than we can be found. And though Harry Potter may well become part of the scholarly canon, what about Percy Jackson and the Olympians? Or the Hunger Games? (probably plenty written about that, it's such a huge social commentary). But are there going to be college classes taught about it? Will it be remembered in 15-20 years? This is a chance for the people to be able to immortalize the authors rather than only the academics. A way for the canon to become more open to people other than straight white males. There are endless possibilities and fandoms can be the beginning of it!